NOTES for Tit 1:10-16

Titus was a disciple of Paul, a convert from among the Gentiles. The Apostle writes to him from Rome while awaiting judgment. In these final days, he wants to strengthen his faithful disciple, whom he appointed bishop in Crete. First of all he reminds him of an issue that remains among the most acute even today. As a Gentile convert, Titus, along with the Christians of Crete, must guard against those who, under the guise of knowledge of the Old Testament, try to restrict the rights of new converts. Experience and knowledge, of course, matter greatly. But nothing can replace living communion with God and prayer, nor the constant striving to know the truth to the degree possible for each person, according to what God has given him.

It would seem that Paul, being himself a Jew who knew his tradition very well, should not have spoken this way about those who called people to follow it and strictly observe all the religious prescriptions of Judaism. But the point is precisely that after meeting the Risen One, Paul never again absolutized his own religion. For him Judaism ceased to be a religion; it became for him a spiritual path, the path of the inner Torah, which is completed in Christ, who revealed to the world the model of the living Torah.

The apostle never denied this path. The problem, however, was that the newly appeared "teachers of the Torah" who had appeared in large numbers in the Church were not thinking about any path and most of all knew nothing about it properly. They liked religion as such; they connected their path with religiosity and with strict, formal fulfillment of all religious prescriptions.

Paul, from his own experience, knew perfectly well that religiosity as such is a spiritual dead end. It leads nowhere and only imitates spiritual life, preserving some of its outward forms and reproducing them outwardly. And the apostle considered it necessary to do everything possible to keep any of those who had turned to Christ and found Him from ending up in such a dead end. He was absolutely sure: Christianity is not a religion, but life in the Kingdom, and religiosity is not needed for this life.

Of course, a religious person too can enter the Kingdom, but on one condition: he does not absolutize his religion and does not impose it on others. Not even because imposing one's religion on others is at least incorrect toward them, but because a person who acts this way himself hopes in his religiosity more than in Christ; otherwise he would not connect with it his own salvation and the salvation of those whom he wants to make as religious as he himself is. It is against this distortion of spiritual and church life that Paul warns everyone, always and very persistently - because here the issue is a substitution by which one can easily lose the Kingdom, and therefore salvation.

As is known, one of the main questions in the yahvisme, quite as the Judaism was the question of the ritual purity. And it is not surprising: because, particularly the ritual purity defined the possibility (or the impossibility) for man to approach the altar and be sanctified. However over time the real sense of the norms and rules of the ritual purity was if not completely, then very thoroughly forgotten. In the time of Paul for many they were already something self-value, requiring a rigorous execution just because the observation of these norms and rules became a religious duty. And their violation began to be considered almost as a crime, not because the relation to the sacred became more feverish, but because religiosity itself (at least, in certain Pharisees circles) became considerably rigorous.

However in the Kingdom the traditional notions of purity and impurity become irrelevant: because the Kingdom is entirely sanctified, sanctified by this breath of God, which penetrates into it to the very end. And for the inhabitants of the Kingdom the division between the pure and the impure is already irrelevant: because there can be by definition nothing impure, i.e. not subjected to sanctification in the Kingdom. And however the religious inertia also penetrated into the communities of church composed of the Jews, as well as the recent gentiles. And it was difficult for the profoundly religious (generally) Jews to accept the fact that the norms and rules of the ritual purity forming the core of their religious tradition, were suddenly irrelevant. And they continued to insist on the observation of rules, in a new context losing all sense.

Continued to ask their observation to every member of the Church, insisting that without such an observation, one cannot enter the Kingdom. And didn’t want at all to accept the fact that for the Church, their religiosity is their purely private affair. And Paul, of course perfectly understands that it is exactly like that, that for the Kingdom the question of purity and impurity is exclusively resolved at the level of the human heart: if it is pure, there cannot be any impurity in the life of such person, and if it is impure, then should be afraid of no other impurity: the worst has already happened. So the Apostle solves the problem of purity and impurity in relation to the Kingdom, and thus, in relation also to the Church.

We love Christ very much, and often because of this love we feel so sorry for Him in His sufferings that we want so badly for Him to avoid them by some miracle. In a way, we become like Peter when he said, "This shall never happen to You" (Matt. 16:22), only we cry out: if only You could avoid such suffering. And in those moments it seems to us that if Judas had been stopped, nothing would have happened. Judas becomes the object of our involuntary desire for revenge.

But we must not forget the main thing. Christ's suffering was voluntary. In the whole drama, Judas played no decisive role; he was simply a victim, a victim of his own weakness. Therefore it is wrong to see him as the embodiment of world evil or anything of the kind. If Judas had not been there, everything would have happened according to another scenario, but the meaning of the Redemption, as the greatest event in human history, would not have changed.

Another question that often arises in connection with Judas concerns his free will. Was he merely an instrument in the hands of providence? After all, Christ says that he was the "son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled" (John 17:12). Of course, this is not so either. A person is never merely an instrument in God's hands; each person whom He created "in His image and likeness" is too precious to Him. Some exegetes believe that when Christ dipped the morsel and gave it to Judas, He did so not in order to amaze the disciples with His omniscience, but to give Judas a chance to come to his senses, since the conversation was quiet, as we can see if we read the text carefully (John 13:26).

Besides, Judas could have repented as Peter did. But he would have had to repent exactly as Peter did, by bearing worthy fruit of repentance. Judas does not manage to do this. And that makes him deeply pitiful. Pity is the feeling that should arise in us toward this man.